Airport Transfers Club
El Arco, the rock arch at Land's End in Cabo San Lucas, photographed from the water

Los Cabos · airport guide

Los Cabos Airport guide

Cabo is a strip rather than a town, and the drive from the airport to where you are staying is twenty minutes or an hour depending on which end of it you booked. Between customs and the doors there is a long indoor corridor of people who would like to arrange that drive for you. We fix the price before you fly, track the flight, and include the meet and greet at arrivals, which turns that corridor into a walk. The rest of this page is the day itself: which terminal you arrive in, what happens between the aircraft door and the outside, and how the authorised ground transport here actually works.

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Los Cabos Airport terminals

Two terminals handle scheduled passengers, alongside a separate building at the north end of the field for private and executive aviation. The operator's own description is short and useful: Terminal 1 serves all domestic operations and some international flights, and Terminal 2 serves international operations only.

For most visitors arriving from the United States, Canada or Europe that means Terminal 2. It is the two storey building. Departures are upstairs across nineteen gates, nine of them with jet bridges, and arrivals are on the ground floor, which is where immigration and customs are. Terminal 1 is a single storey building with eight gates at ground level, so passengers walk out to the aircraft rather than down a bridge.

If you find a Terminal 3 on an older map or in an old forum post, it is not a mistake and it has not gone missing. Terminal 3 was absorbed into Terminal 2 between 2018 and 2020 and took that name. There is no separate Terminal 3 to look for today.

There is also a second, much smaller airport called Cabo San Lucas International, in the town itself. It carried around fifty thousand passengers in 2025 against seven and a half million here, and it is used by a handful of regional and semi private services rather than the airlines most visitors fly. If your booking says SJD you are coming to the airport this guide describes, and if it says CSL you are not.

The airport does not publish a list of which airline uses which terminal, so there is no point guessing from a page like this one. Your boarding pass carries it and your airline's app carries it, and either of those is current in a way that we cannot be.

Last checked September 2026.

Arriving at Los Cabos Airport step by step

International flights land at Terminal 2 and are processed on its ground floor. The order is immigration, then baggage, then customs, then a long corridor, then the doors.

At immigration an officer checks your passport and records your entry. Check whatever you are handed or whatever is stamped before you walk away from the desk, because how long you are permitted to stay is settled there and it is much harder to sort out afterwards.

Once you have your bags you reach customs, which is run by Mexico's tax authority and works differently from most countries. Every arriving passenger files a customs declaration, which can be completed online before you travel or on the aircraft. You hand it in, you press a button, and a light comes on. Green means you walk through. Red means your bags are screened. It is random, so a red light is not an accusation and does not mean anything has gone wrong.

What comes after customs is the part nobody warns first time visitors about, and it has its own section below.

Last checked September 2026.

The arrivals corridor at Los Cabos Airport

When you clear customs at Los Cabos you do not walk outside. You are funnelled into a long indoor corridor lined with desks and people, and you have to walk its whole length to reach the doors. This corridor is the single most complained about thing at this airport, and it is worth knowing what it is before you are standing in it with your luggage.

The people working it are not airport staff, they are not customs officers, and they are not the transport company you booked. Many of them are selling timeshare and vacation club presentations, and the approach is well practised. Some will ask where you are staying. Some will offer help with your transport, or a ride at a very good price, or discounted excursions. What is bought in exchange is several hours of your first full day at a presentation, and travellers consistently report those sessions running well past the length they were quoted.

The structural fact is the one to hold on to. Nothing legitimate collects you inside that corridor. Authorised taxis and pre booked transfers all work from outside the building, so anyone inside offering you a ride is not the ride you arranged.

Walking past is straightforward. Keep moving, and if you want a phrase for it, no gracias, ya tengo transportacion ends the conversation politely. Nobody will stop you, and once you are through the doors it is over. It is a much shorter walk when the answer to every offer is that the ride is already booked and paid for.

The corridor is a walk when nothing is left to arrange.Book your SJD transfer

Taxis at Los Cabos Airport

The airport is a federal zone, and that is the whole explanation for how ground transport works here. Only concession holding operators may pick up passengers inside it: authorised taxis, authorised tourist transport and authorised buses. The airport's operator lists ground transportation at the arrivals level of both terminals, staffed from early morning until late evening.

You arrange a taxi at the official ground transportation window, marked Transportacion Terrestre, rather than by talking to anybody in the corridor or at the kerb. You give the attendant the name of your hotel and they quote the set rate for that zone. Cabo does not use meters, it uses zones, and the rate is for the vehicle rather than per person. A driver who approaches you before you have been to that window is not part of the authorised system.

So the number you pay is a number you first hear at a window, at the end of a flight, after the corridor. Bring cash as well: card terminals at the window are not always working, and being told that at the counter with a queue behind you is an unpleasant way to start a holiday. Which zone your hotel falls into is also decided there, and the Corridor is long.

We are not printing a fare here, because zone rates change and are not ours to quote. Ours is fixed for the whole vehicle, for your hotel, and shown before you pay anything.

Last checked September 2026.

Know the zone, the vehicle and the price before you fly.Price my SJD transfer

Can you use Uber at Los Cabos Airport?

Uber runs in Los Cabos as a city service, and Uber's own Los Cabos Airport page offers pickups there. Both of those are true, and neither is an answer to the question people are actually asking, which is whether a car will come and collect them from arrivals.

Mexico's transport ministry, the SICT, stated in October 2025 that app based transport companies hold no authorisation to provide these services at the country's airports, and that only taxis, tourist transport and buses with official concessions may carry passengers within the airport perimeter. Uber holds a court suspension that limits how the National Guard may act towards its drivers, and the ministry was explicit that a suspension is not an authorisation. At Los Cabos the pickup rights at arrivals sit with the airport taxi operators under contract with the airport.

The practical version is short. Do not plan your arrival around an app. Landing with a tired family and discovering that your ride wants to meet you a fifteen minute walk off airport property is the worst possible moment to learn this.

Use the authorised window inside, or have the whole thing arranged before you fly.

Last checked September 2026.

Arrange it before you fly and the app question never comes up.Book your SJD transfer

Your options from Los Cabos Airport, side by side

Four ways out of Los Cabos Airport, and the differences that start to matter after the corridor. Our column is built from this destination's own inclusions and vehicle tiers. The other three are what we could verify from the airport operator and the authorities, and where a fact genuinely varies we say so rather than guess.

 Private transfer (us)Airport taxiUber or appShared shuttle
Price known before you fly?Yes. One fixed price for the whole vehicle.No. The zone rate is quoted at the window on the day.An in-app estimate, once you have landed and requested.Usually, when booked online in advance.
When you payOnline when you book. Free cancellation up to 72h before pickup.On the day, and card terminals are not always working.In the app.Varies by operator.
Waits if your flight is late?Flight trackingVaries.No. You request after you are through, whenever that is.Varies by operator.
Meets you at arrivals?Meet & greet at arrivalsNo. You go to the ground transportation window.No.Varies by operator.
Luggage space guaranteed?Yes. You book the whole vehicle, in tiers up to 16 passengers and 16 bags.Varies with the vehicle offered at the window.Varies with the car that accepts.A shared van with an allowance per person. Varies.
Available at the terminal?Booked before you fly, not bought at the airport.Yes. At both terminals, early morning to late evening.Not authorised inside the airport (Mexico's SICT, October 2025).Varies.
One price, agreed before you fly, for the whole vehicle.Get your Los Cabos Airport price

Last checked September 2026.

Getting from Los Cabos Airport to your hotel

Cabo is a strip rather than a single town, and where you are on it changes the drive far more than which terminal you landed in. San Jose del Cabo is the closest, just south of the airport. The Tourist Corridor is the run of resorts along the highway between the two towns. Cabo San Lucas is at the far end, where the peninsula stops. The Pacific side, Diamante and the Quivira and Sunset stretch, is past Cabo San Lucas again and further out than most people expect.

Each route page below carries the real distance, the drive time we schedule, a price per vehicle for one way and round trip, and a description of the road itself.

Popular routes from Los Cabos Airport

Leaving Los Cabos? Book your ride to Los Cabos Airport.

Sources